I was a 'lost boy' of Sudan. The US welcomed me and I've been a citizen for nine years. Give more refugees a chance. It's good for them and America.

Every day is my birthday. I tell anyone who asks. Because, in fact, I don’t know the date I was born, only the year. I realized shortly after coming to the U.S. that, since people were nice to you on your birthday, I could say that every day was my birthday and people would always be nice to me.

They’re not always as nice when they learn I am a former refugee and immigrant, even though I’ve been a U.S. citizen for nine years, and my resettlement was authorized by an act of Congress.

I was born in 1986 in what is now the independent country of South Sudan. Back then, the region was part of a larger Sudan and fighting for its independence. When I was seven years old, the government sent militias to purge the countryside of their “problems.” This was done in a systematic fashion with armed groups moving from village to village, wiping out entire families except, for the most part, the boys in the surrounding hills who were out tending the family livestock.

With no families and no communities left to return to, we became the “lost boys” who traveled across the land to escape certain death. Estimates of our numbers reached 30,000. We arrived at a refugee camp in Fugnido, Ethiopia, but a few years later, the Ethiopian government was overthrown and the new government told us to leave — at gunpoint. We trekked once more across Sudan, ending up at the Kakuma refugee camp in the Kenyan desert.

Refugee camps are where you wait to die

Only about 12,000 kids survived this journey of about 1,000 miles. I would never have made it without the help of my older cousin, Michael, who carried me on his back at the toughest points. And yet, Kakuma was no place to enjoy the rest of my childhood.

A refugee camp is a place where you wait for your death. When you are an orphan, you have no hope, nobody cares about you — and when you are a refugee, it’s a double burden. I went temporarily blind from malnutrition and, needless to say, there were no birthday cakes anywhere to be found.

The camp had a school — by age 15, I had the equivalent of a fourth grade education — but I couldn’t focus in class as the lack of food was too great an obstacle. Even if I was healthy, though, I probably would not have noticed my future boss, Paul Spiegel, who at that time was coordinating medical care at Kakuma on behalf of an international aid organization.

Fast forward a few years and the most amazing thing is that I now work for Paul. I was welcomed into the U.S. in 2001 and caught up on my education. I graduated high school and then college, got a master’s degree and then a Ph.D. in public health, and I"m now pursuing postdoctoral research.

For us, education is our mothers and our fathers. We left our homes fleeing extreme violence, having lost everything and just about everyone. Roughly 3,800 of us came to the U.S. in search of opportunity, the chance to make our lives what we wanted to be.

Take my older cousin Michael, for example. After coming to the U.S., he served three tours of duty in Iraq with the Marines and is married with children while earning a second college degree. I have two other cousins who made it to the U.S.; both are doctors, and one of them works on a U.S. military base.

Refugees flee far worse than risks at border

U.S. politics has taken a decidedly anti-refugee and anti-immigrant turn these days, which is tragic. But people keep trying to come into our country; what they are fleeing is often so much worse than whatever barriers and risks they may face at the border.

My heart melts for the refugees who will not be given the same opportunity that I received. Refugees from all countries, no matter their age, sex, religion, ethnic group or sexual orientation, from Central African Republic to Syria to Honduras to Myanmar, all deserve the same opportunity that I had.

There are currently 25.4 million refugees around the world, according to the United Nations, and more than half of them are under the age of 18. These are people fleeing conflict or persecution because their lives or freedom are at dire risk. The U.S. is expected to take in only 22,000 refugees for the year ending Sept. 30, the lowest number since 1980. The numbers are dropping even as the need intensifies. For the good of our country and the world, we need to accept more people and help them achieve their potential.

I am not unique. I am just so blessed. And not because every day is my birthday.